Bystander Who Killed School Shooter Is Father of 2 Students
A father kills the shooter at his own kids' school. I keep turning that over, because it's the kind of detail that would get a screenwriter laughed out of a room. Too neat, critics would say. Too convenient. But reality doesn't care about narrative plausibility, and that's exactly what makes it so unsettling. We want our stories to make sense, and this one refuses to.
I think what sticks with me is the timing. He wasn't supposed to be there. He just was, on that day, at that hour, in that parking lot or hallway or wherever it happened. The difference between a tragedy and a near-miss is often a matter of seconds and a few feet, and this time the pendulum swung the other way. I'd want to know what he was doing there, whether it was routine or accident, because those small details are where the strangeness lives.
On the press secretary firing, five days is almost comically brief, but it also shows how volatile the whole apparatus has become. I don't have much to add there beyond noting that both stories share a sense of instability, of systems that can flip in an instant. We like to think we're in control, but the news keeps reminding me we're mostly just riding the turbulence.